Last
October 13, members of the Astronomical League of the
Philippines (ALP) went to Caliraya , Laguna to have
their stargazing session under dark sky. Members who were present were ALP President James
Kevin Ty, wife Charito and son Kendrick Cole KC Ty; Gary Andreassen , wife Irma
and son Steinar ; Arnel Campos , and Oliver de Guzman.

They
individually proceeded to the site at their own pace but
mostly arrived at the site at around 6:30pm. The sky was
clear but dew was very heavy but heavy dewing translates
to good transparency thus they weren't
disappointed this time around. James brought along his
TV-101 refractor on Vixen GP-DX mount with ATIK-16HR ccd
camera as well as his portable setup in
Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS L lens with Canon EOS
500D DSLR on Kenko Sky Memo-R mount ; Arnel with Explore
Scientific 102mm refractor on EQ-1 mount ; Gary
with his Celestron C6N Newtonian reflector and Canon
EOS1100D DSLR on Orion SVP
EQ-5 mount, while Oliver de Guzman brought along
an Orion ST-80 refractor with Pentax +ist DS DSLR
mounted on Synta EQ-2mount

The sky was
almost 80% clear the whole night till morning despite
some small partly low altitude clouds that pass once in
a while. But due to heavy dewing, the soils was a
little soft thus all of them experience tripod sinking
into the soft sol a bit thus polar alignment needs to be
done once in a while due to this circumstances.
James had to forgo his CCD imaging plans because of the
sinking tripod problem and opted to concentrate on his
backup DSLR imaging through the Kenko Sky Memo.and image
M45 Pleiades star cluster, Comet 168/P Hergenrother and
M42 Orion Nebula. Arnel opted to use his Canon EOS
550D DSLR on sturpdy tripod to image the Summer Milky
Way in the early evening; Gary was able to image M42
Orion Nebula while Oliver de Guzman had a good time
imaging numerous DSOs such as M42 Orion Nebula, M31
Andromeda Galaxy, Flame Nebula, M35 star cluster,
Rosette Nebula.

They got to
image till the early morning before dawn and captured
the thin crescent Moon as well as its beautiful
earthshine. They then took their traditional group
pic before heading to Jollibee for their breakfast en
route to going home :)